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Friday, May 12, 2017

Papi and Me

by
Ricardo José González-Rothi

A
sixteen-degree forecast for North Florida was about the only type of day one
would dare wear a herring bone wool sports coat and not look out of place. As I
peeled the plastic bag off the hanger and pulled it from the closet, I noticed
the handkerchief in the breast pocket.

The
prior summer, I had found myself consoling a despondent mother, making funeral
arrangements, and sorting through my dead father’s belongings. He had owned the
jacket for over thirty years, probably only wearing it three or four times.
Sporting hand-crafted leather buttons, wide lapels, and stitched lining, Papi
boasted about “the thick and precise weave, that it was handmade in Scotland...
.” He had bought it on sale at Schlessinger’s, paying cash. It was the only
nice thing my father ever bought for himself since we came to America.

Forty-five
years earlier we had become steeped in a not unfamiliar trajectory for
refugees, ten adults and six cousins crammed into “the uncle’s house in New
Jersey” and cozily sharing a single bathroom—one sink, one toilet. Since our
having left Cuba, Papi worked temporarily as a dishwasher at Steak-n-Shake,
then leveraging his thirty years’ experience as a grocer, he was hired as head
cashier and bag boy in someone’s Latin market. We had no car. Every day, he stood
at the bus stop at Bergenline and 85th. He opened Kiko’s six days a
week, worked on his feet twelve or thirteen hours each day for a
not-to-boast-about hourly wage. The owner made good money. My mother, a former
school principal in Cuba, worked the graveyard shift cleaning bedpans and
surgical instruments in a community hospital. She and Papi saw each other
during the week like passing ships, and it was during weekends that we spent
time together as a family. That would be the rhythm our lives in New Jersey for
several years.

My
father thrived on the simplicity of life. I remember a few months after we
arrived in the US, when on a bus to southern New Jersey, we passed a cornfield.
He stood up from his seat marveling at the orderly rows, the tall stalks, the
deep green leaves. I think it reminded him of the remote farm where he grew up
with four younger brothers and two sisters whom he left behind when we came to
the United States. He was mortified and greatly embarrassed, when in his
excitement while looking out the back window, the bus driver barked in
New-Joisyish English “Hey, you! Sit down bac dare!” Papi didn’t understand what
the man was saying and was greatly embarrassed and offended as other passengers
looked up. It wouldn’t be the last time he would be embarrassed about not
speaking or understanding English. Despite efforts by me and my brother to
teach him, he struggled. It was hard for a man in his mid-fifties with barely
an eighth-grade education to learn a new language. He couldn’t understand why
people would become frustrated when he struggled with his “Inglich”, which made
him that much more self-conscious. For almost ten years he depended on one of
us to accompany him to the bank to translate when he deposited his paychecks.

My
father had immaculate handwriting, and even with a disabling lack of sensation
in his fingers such that he could no longer button his shirts, he wrote monthly
to our family back home. We, in turn, rarely heard from them. When I would
inquire, Papi would propose that the mail delivery in Cuba was poor or that
they couldn’t afford the stamps or that the government intercepted the letters.
There was probably some truth in all his explanations, but I suspect these were
in part a justification, his way of coping with unrequited replies. I think he
felt responsible that they stayed behind and that he left, duty-bound, with his
immediate family. I recall him sitting pensively by a window one evening, with
a paper pad on his lap, while he wrote to his siblings in Cuba. It was before
Christmas, an urban-grey New Jersey day, and it was snowing heavily. It must
have been painful for him to be away from his siblings, longing for the Cuban
sun, and knowing he might never see them again.

Papi
was ecstatic one day when early in my senior year of high school he approached
me with a proposal that if he could save enough money, I could partner with him
and buy “our own grocery store.” Dreading the effects of my response, I had to
be frank and told him that what I really wanted was to go to college and
eventually study medicine. Facial
muscles betrayed his disappointment, and with a forced smile and a deflated
nod, he acknowledged my response, never to bring up the topic again.

My
father continued to work until he was seventy-two, when his knees no longer
allowed him to stand for long periods of time. He helped me through college,
and then through medical school. Several years ago he stood beside me for a
photo when I was honored by students I taught as Professor of Medicine at a school
where I would eventually establish myself as a senior faculty member.

The
summer he died, I had sorted through his personal belongings. I folded the herring
bone jacket and put it in my suitcase along with his old wallet and his
penknife. Inside a well-creased envelope, postmarked May 1973, was a five-page
letter I had written him thirty-four years earlier upon graduating from
college. Written longhand in Spanish, I had detailed how much I appreciated him
and all the sacrifices he made for me and for our family. I told him that I
loved him, that I hoped I could make him proud of me some day. I also let him
know that every time I wrote out my middle name (his first name), I would
remember to think of him. It was the only letter I found in his belongings. I
flew back to Florida.

On
this cold February morning, months later, while getting dressed to make
hospital rounds with my residents, I slipped on Papi’s wool jacket. It fit,
looked and felt right. I noted a small, hard bulge over the breast pocket. When
I pulled the handkerchief from the pocket, a peppermint wrapped in plastic fell
onto the bed.

Standing
in front of the mirror, wearing my father’s jacket and holding peppermint and
handkerchief in each hand, I chuckled. Papi always insisted that it was impolite
to cough in public, and he never forgot to remind us that if we went out, we
should always take a mint in case we felt the urge to cough … and yes, in the
event we coughed, we should always have a handkerchief to cover our mouth.

Being
a lung specialist, many of my patients struggle with incessant coughs. How
ironic was it to have found myself, so ensconced in the academia of it all,
that I had forgotten all about peppermint and cough.

My
father had simple likes, but he was also a complex man. He carried his emotions
deeply and quietly. Complaining about the hardness of life was never part of
his vocabulary. He was well-liked by the countless customers he served as a
grocer and businessman for over sixty years of his profession, both in Cuba and
in Kiko’s market. It was not unusual for
me to see my father interact with strangers over the years, even those who
could not understand his broken English, and universally they always seemed to
find my father likeable. At home, Papi rarely showed exuberance in his
emotions, except for those times his granddaughters would tickle him
mercilessly. In my fifty-seven years around him I never actually saw my father
cry. I am sure he cried, but if he did, it was not in his nature to shed tears
publicly. This was not something I would inherit from him. I wonder sometimes
if things between Papi and me might have been different. We might have had a
great father-and-son grocery business.

As
I stepped into my car on the way to work, I conjured a hint of his Old Spice
aftershave ... and I could almost feel the warmth and familiar grip of his two
muscular arms wrapped around me from behind, just like he used to do when I was
little.

I
approached the on-ramp on the highway. Looking on the rearview mirror, I
thought about my middle name.

An academic physician for over three
decades with a primary emphasis on scientific writing, RicardoJosé González-Rothi is
a relative newcomer to creative writing. Silver hair and a busy career have not
deterred him from his love of the written word and the magic of the tale. He
has had fiction, creative non-fiction, and poetry featured in Acentos Review, HealLiterary Magazine, Gainesville Magazine, and
the journal Chest.